


Die Forever, Live Tonight

by lalalive



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:24:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalive/pseuds/lalalive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Arthur finally returns, Merlin (now going by Max) has to help him through the shock of living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Die Forever, Live Tonight

_"Whatever happens -"_

_. . ._

_"I'm the King, Merlin, you can't tell me what to do."_

_. . ._

_"Goodbye, Morgana."_

_"Peace at last."_

_. . ._

_‘Just hold me, please.’_

_Sun without heat. Dawn breaking more than just the horizon. A thank you. The crushing weight of a lifeless corpse. A destiny fulfilled. A promise. The agony of a withering spirit._

_The slow, unbearable weight of living and breathing. Too many years passing. A wasteland of bloodshed, tears, and dirt under fingernails._

_Waiting._

_Waiting._

_Mourning never stops._

**Day 0**  
Manhattan, New York  
June 16, 2013  
3.56AM

I woke like I'd been shocked, electrocuted by some unseen force. My ceiling was a black void above my head, the streets below screaming with sirens from passing cop cars. I glanced over at the clock on the bedside table and growled in displeasure. It had been a while since I'd had the dreams….memories. I didn't know what to call them. They only happened at night but they were definitely, tangible things I continually surpressed.

Lived experiences I wished would evaporate into nothingness. 

It had been two years since I'd last had them. Before then it had been three. It had taken centuries for my brain to bury those last hours into the untouched corners of my mind so they didn't plague my waking state - several more for their frequency to become tolerable. Within the last few years, I'd wake from them feeling a complex sort of unease that came with knowledge.

Of places.

Of time.

Of dead things and lost cities that would never return again. 

Knowledge that mixes with anticipation and makes me halt in my cynicism and vaguely traces hope down my spine.

No matter how many years had put distance between me and those final seconds, I was always hit with a wave of nostalgic longing after waking up; it always felt so much closer in the aftermath of sleep. 

I sat up, ran a hand through my hair and grabbed the glass off the bedside table. There was a mouthful of whiskey left over, grown stale from being in the open air for too long. It didn't burn as it went down my throat, rather licked a tepid pool of comfort at my nerves before fizzing out and leaving me wired. 

With shallow breaths I reveled in the familiar feeling, the unsettling sensation of missed opportunity and unintentional betrayal. I wished the whiskey had been stronger, wished it would kill my nerves and put me into a blackout sleep so I could forget everything – go back to pretending I was normal. Instead, I did what I had always done and would continue to do until the end of my pointless existence. 

Getting out of bed, I slid my boxers on and walked over to the picture window. I smiled the empty sort of smile I usually gave New York City and bent to grab my mobile off the chair next to me. I didn’t bother to look at the screen as my fingers swiped and clicked with precise muscle memory, just continued to let Manhattan blind me before the sun rose to finish the job.

The call went straight to voicemail, as I knew it would.

‘Ethan, it’s Max. I know it’s early but I won’t be coming in today…actually, I won’t be in the office for the next few weeks.’

I sniffed as I turned away from the window, walking over to my closet to pull out my suitcase. 

‘It’s a…family thing. Sorry for the short notice, but the Ozak account should be all taken care of. I’ll have my laptop with me in case anything urgent happens.’ 

Tossing the phone onto my pillow, I moved quickly around the room gathering random pieces of clothing. There was an acute sense of urgency to my actions, and it didn’t matter if they were folded or wrinkled beyond recognition I just needed to leave. 

One bag was always enough. I would usually find nothing had changed and spend the rest of these excursions drinking and smoking in a hotel room willing myself phlegmatic. It took little thought to work myself through the process of buying the first flight to Wales I could get. Price didn’t matter. Money rarely did anymore. 

**Day 1**  
Bardsey Island, Wales  
June 17, 2013  
1.45PM

Standing on the deck of the ferry, I took a long drag on my cigarette and inhaled the wind from the sea. Already I could tell something was off, a certain idiosyncrasy to the salt that seemed foreign and disrupted. I let the smoke in my legs turn the hope in my stomach to ash, told myself not to form any sort of expectation because it would hurt more finding everything was the same as it always was. 

I threw my cigarette butt to the ground and rubbed my foot over it, squinted through the damp breeze at the lighthouse in the distance and let the fog drown me. 

_He isn’t awake._

_He isn’t awake._

I repeated the words in my head as I walked over the grass. I whispered them as I let the rain drench my hair and plaster it to my forehead.

Another drag on a moist cigarette. 

_Maybe._

**Day 3**  
Pwllheli, Gwynedd  
June 18, 2013  
8.56AM

I asked the concierge at the Crown Hotel to send a copy of every town paper up to my room. No, I didn’t want room service. No, I didn’t want a morning wake up call. They left the papers on a tray that also had a pot of tea and some cream. I didn’t bother to eat breakfast. 

My logic was simple but relied heavily on one factor: that he had been found. He would be hard to miss and the event would be reported.

Lounging on the bed, I scoured every page for local news about a man – any man – who even vaguely resembled him. I was on the third paper before I finally saw it:

** Man found wandering naked on Bardsey Island. **

He’d been trapped there for days, malnourished and confused. It took four men to persuade him to get on the ferry – he claimed he’d never seen such a thing. They sedated him when they made land. He was held at the local hospital.

It finally happened. 

\---  
I asked the hotel to call me a cab, told them to take me to Bryn Beryl Hospital. Everything was alright, everything was fine. Journey time and length mattered as much as money did. The cab driver remained silent the whole way. I paid him in cash and probably over tipped him. 

Years ago, I’d taken to wearing sunglasses. It was not, as many assumed, a fashion choice as much as it was a means to an end. Magic was no longer something I needed to explain away with my eyes so cleverly hidden.

The nurse on duty asked who I was here to see and I told her I was a relative of the man they had brought in a few days prior.

She asked me his name.

I asked her when they had figured it out.

She told me he kept repeating his name as soon as they entered the hospital and was offended they didn’t know who he was. 

I said ‘Arthur Pendragon.’ I hated her for making me say it out loud for the first time in centuries and not to him. 

I told her I was his brother and she narrowed her eyes. When she went to look at his chart, I casually added information for next of kin with a bit of magic, naming myself. I laughed, realizing this would be the first and only time I would ever be a Pendragon by name. It was a bitter sort of laugh that didn’t really make me smile, rather made me remember other things I’d become very good at burying. 

She led me to his room and told me to ‘be careful, he’s hostile.’ I told her I’d seen him in worse states. She fixed me with the sort of sympathetic eyes that nurses are trained to have, and I told her it was ok. Only after she walked away did I wonder who I was reassuring with that statement. 

Standing in the doorway to his room, I watched him fight with the wires and cables that connected to machinery he wasn’t bothering to understand. He was cursing to himself and ignoring me. It was the first time anything had felt comfortable in centuries. 

I coughed to get his attention.

He stopped moving.

‘Merlin.’

It made going by Max for a thousand years worth it.

 **Day 4**  
Pwllheli, Gwynedd  
June 19, 2013  
8.12PM

I brought him a change of clothes and checked him out of the hospital. He was shell-shocked and I used his rare silence to work through every explanation I would need to give; I built up the bravery to tell him the truth. 

We went to a bar in town, one that was quiet and offered privacy. With a drink in his hand, I thought he would be vocal and demanding. Instead, he remained reticent and I knew the look on his face well enough to understand that he had a thousand questions, was struggling to choose the most important ones. 

His first question was why he was alive. I winced when he asked it, hoping he wouldn’t remember the details of his death. He recited them all with excruciating detail.

I told him the truth.

‘I don’t know.’

His second question was loaded.

‘What happened after I –‘ He cut himself off.

This time, the truth was infinitely more difficult to share. Somehow, he managed to keep his composure throughout the tale and I was reminded of all the reasons why he was the only king I would ever fully trust. I explained that we returned to Camelot, Leon, Percival and I, to tell Gwen what happened. She inherited the kingdom, and ruled with fairness and honour. Cracks formed along my heart, flaking with each word I spoke, as I detailed to him how Gwen was in the very early stages of pregnancy at the time of his death. She bore a daughter, Aurora, who had his eyes and his mother’s heart. She married a good king, kind and intelligent like him, and Camelot finally knew true peace.

Two hundred years after his passing, Camelot fell in the bloodiest crusade the world had ever witnessed. The kingdom didn’t stand a chance and I fled to England for safety. Camelot was forgotten in the rubble that got cleared away soon after. People only spoke its name as a cautionary tale. 

After several minutes of heartbroken silence, Arthur spoke without looking me in the eyes.

‘So I have family out there. Somewhere.’ 

‘You can’t go see them, Arthur,’ I explained. ‘You and I, we’re legends now. Just stories. No matter how much we bleed or how deeply we breathe, we aren’t real.’

He was quiet the rest of the night, drank until he blacked out at the hotel in the middle of the bed. It was alarming how still he remained throughout the night. 

It looked like he had died. I hated that I almost felt used to it. 

**Day 7**  
Manhattan, New York  
June 22, 2013  
4.38PM

Sitting at my dining table working on my laptop, Arthur came stumbling in with a bottle of beer in his hand a grimace on his face. He fixed me with an angry sort of glare, the kind that blamed me for everything and nothing, and said he couldn’t do it. 

The world, in his eyes, was too much and too little. It moved to quickly without giving him a chance to process it all. 

‘New York is burning me,’ he said. ‘All the noise and the lights, the inherent indifference of people that no one bothers to question. It’s burning me alive.’

‘Are you drunk?’ I asked.

‘Probably.’ 

‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ It was a cruel thing to ask.

’10 feet underwater with the rest of me.’

We didn’t speak for the rest of the night. 

**Day 9**  
June 24, 2013  
10.22PM

‘Why do you even bother to work?’ he asked. The question was one he had been pondering since we returned to the States, one that plagued his reason since it was clear I didn’t need to. 

‘It gives me something to do…gave me something to do,’ was my honest reply. 

‘What do you do with the money?’

‘I give half of my salary to charity.’ I’d accumulated so much wealth over the past several centuries that money no longer held value.

‘Do you use magic anymore?

‘Only if absolutely necessary, or I can’t manage without it.’ There had been enough development and magic in the world without my interference. 

‘Why do you go by Max?’ 

I scrutinized him, rolling my eyes at him as though he were a child asking too many questions.

‘I’m just curious,’ he said, shrugging.

I sighed. ‘Merlin is too…obvious. I told you, we’ve been reduced to fiction. And…’ I trailed off, wondering if I should finish the sentence.

‘And what?’ he pressed.

‘It reminded me too much of home.’ 

Arthur didn’t move from his spot on the couch, and looked away from me immediately after I spoke the words. He stared off into nothingness, dragging his mouth along the lip of his beer bottle. Eventually, he stood quickly and walked briskly to my kitchen. He came back and tossed me a beer. 

We drank and drank and drank until it was easier to imagine everyone was still alive. 

**Day 13**  
June 28, 2013  
6.42PM

I might never know what prompted me to say the words, but I couldn’t find it in me to regret them completely. Retract them, maybe, because Arthur looked as though I had burned him with acid in their wake. 

We were arguing about why he came back. 

‘There has to be a reason!’ He was demanding and fighting his way through bitterness just to keep himself calm. ‘Why now when everyone died all those years ago?’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ I kept repeating myself, waving my hands through the air in defeat because the truth was that I really _didn’t_ know and we probably never would. ‘I’m not a prophet, Arthur! I’m surprised as much as you are!’

‘I shouldn’t be here if there isn’t some sort of need!’ He was pressing his fingers to his chest, begging me for an answer I would never have.

‘I wish you weren’t!’ I hadn’t meant to shout. He turned pale and the thought of being considerate, of stopping my verbal whiplash, didn’t occur to me. ‘Just because you’re here, Arthur, doesn’t mean I get to live a normal life. I have to watch you die. Again. And this time I won’t get to wait for your return. It’s game over.’

His face was painted with a mortified look, the kind that made my brain stop and my soul bleed. It reminded me of when Uther died, when Gwen was enchanted. When Morgana had betrayed us all. 

I wondered if he would remember what I’d said with the same kind of hurt he would remember those moments, and I hated myself for stooping so low. 

**Day 22**  
July 7, 2013  
2.15PM

The celebration of Independence Day gave Arthur a sort of purpose, and suddenly we had found an odd balance between us that consisted of my attempt to return to normalcy and his desire to learn the history he had missed. 

He spent hours on the computer going from webpage to webpage, remarking occasionally that the machine itself was ‘incredible’ and ‘impossible,’ trying to win a game of catch up in which the only competitor was himself. We sat in the same room together, neither feeling the need to talk, feeling the sort of comfort we once had filter through the room. 

‘What was the French Revolution like, Merlin?’

‘What were the Opium Wars like, Merlin?’

‘Why did the Holocaust happen, Merlin?’

These questions were just as difficult to answer as the ones concerning our own personal timeline. They were difficult because I would never forget their details; they were difficult because I survived endless years of fear without him to give me strength. 

**Day 63**  
August 17, 2013  
9.14PM

I’d slept better in the last month than I had since I could remember. They were neither deep nor life affirming, because I would never truly understand my purpose in the new world, but they were peaceful and they were calm.

We rarely spoke about the past anymore and Arthur had slowly started to adjust to his new surroundings. We were comfortable but anxious, waiting for any kind of sign or reason as to why he was back.

Secretly, I started to think I had willed him back. That he came back because I needed him back

It was a weak answer, but it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Historical Note: The Arthurian Legend is surrounded by several disputes about whether or not it took place England or France, and trying to pick a location for Avalon is equally as difficult. There is a strong case for Glastonbury but I went with Bardsey Island because it resembles the location used in the show AND there is a strong use of the Welsh language in the written legend. The other thing, is that the description I created of Camelot after Arthur's death is creative license. I know full well that there are SEVERAL pieces of writing that discuss the aftermath, particularly Le Morte d'Arthur, which describes Gwen, Lancelot, and Hector, crusading down to the Turks for a war where they die on Good Friday. This is the war I implied, however I moved the fictional timeline forward because feels. There's also a separate account of Gwen joining a convent after Arthur's death and remaining there until her death.
> 
> The title of the fic is inspired by the Innerpartysystem track Die Tonight Live Forever.


End file.
